One of the entries claims that Nemo's Grand daughter is a character in Watchmen. I can't find anything to substantiate this. Janni's daughter's name is "Hira" which I can't find on any list of Watchmen characters. Is that post trying to suggest that Janni is Janey Slater? That is completely false on many levels.

DocDish

08:00:31 AM Jan 2nd 2012edited by DocDish

There is a minor character in Watchmen called 'Hira Manish' who is a surrealist artist who helps visualise Ozymandias' creature. She certainly appears to be from the Indian subcontinent.

The map of "The Blazing World" in The Black Dossier had a familiar phone box symbol (positioned over Norway), and the Second Doctor appears in a brief walk-on cameo in "Century: 1969"

Given the events of the book it's possible that character is actually Father Brennan.

Since the same actor played both characters it could work as a Shout-Out, but I'd argue that the character is clearly supposed to be the Second Doctor and not Father Brennan; for one thing, the character in the panel is clearly not a priest (which, if the character was supposed to be Brennan, would be the obvious choice of attire), and you just need to compare a photo of the Second Doctor with the character in the panel in question to see that it's almost identical.

Heroville

02:38:46 PM Aug 2nd 2011edited by Heroville

Priests don't always wear their outfits when they're out and about as civilians; there are a few scenes in The Omen where we see Brennan unfrocked. Its clear that O'Neill was going for the immediate recognition of Troughton as the Second Doctor but that doesn't automatically make it him. Maybe it's one or the other or maybe, in this world, the Second Doctor masquerades as Brennan to stop Damien or maybe, as in so many classic Who stories, there is someone on this world who coincidentally looks exactly like the Second Doctor and it's Father Brennan. There's a second layer that ties much better into the narrative and it shouldn't be discounted.

DoctorNemesis

09:33:25 PM Aug 4th 2011

Fair point about the Celebrity Paradox, and the use of Troughton certainly does work on the obvious level of Doctor Who and (what I think, anyway, is) the more subtextual reference of The Omen, in light of the plot — as I say, I have no objections whatsoever to considering it a Shout-Out, albeit a somewhat roundabout one.

But Lawyer-Friendly Cameo is a different matter; it seems a bit of a stretch to me that O'Neill would take a well-known and recognizable character, draw the character in such a fashion that it's clearly and instantly recognizable as that particular character, but would actually be intending it to be a completely different character who just happened to be played by the same actor and who just decided to dress exactly like the first character for some reason, particularly when he could have just as easily drawn the character in a fashion that instantly, distinctively and clearly identified him as the different character. Civilian clothes or not (it's been a while since I've seen The Omen) but if you wanted to make the link to Brennan direct O'Neill could just as easily have put him in a dog-collar or something.

And yes, I recognize that this is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen we're talking about, which loves these kind of easter eggs and references, but even by the standards of the series describing this as a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo seems to be getting more into Epileptic Trees or Wild Mass Guessing territory for me. There's nothing in that panel to indicate that O'Neil and Moore are suggesting that the Doctor and Brennan were one and the same (granted, it's only a one-panel cameo, but still) and suggesting that it's Father Brennan who just happened to decide one day to dress exactly like the Second Doctor for some reason is, I think anyway, a bit convoluted to convincingly fit as a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo.

Like I say; I'm certainly not denying that this layer of intertextuality exists. My disagreement stems from whether we can call it a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo or not, and I honestly don't think we can. If nothing else, Occam's Razor alone would suggest that if Kevin O'Neil decided to draw the character as the Second Doctor and make him clearly and recognizably the Second Doctor, then it's probably not supposed to be Father Brennan.

isaygoodsir

12:23:20 AM Oct 4th 2011

It should probably be noted that the choice to give Patrick Troughton's Doctor a cameo may have something to with the fact that during his tenure there was a story called The Mind Robber, in which the Doctor finds himself in the 'Land of Fiction', where he meets various fictional characters. The implications of this I think are best expressed here:

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